


With This Ring

by sanctuary_for_all



Series: Partners [13]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Established Relationship, Feels, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Wedding Planning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-09
Updated: 2014-10-04
Packaged: 2018-02-12 10:23:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2106147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanctuary_for_all/pseuds/sanctuary_for_all
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Danny wrestle with the question of engagement rings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Terrible Ideas

**Author's Note:**

> Technically, this is set between chapters 1 and 2 of "The Letter," but I posted all the letter-related chapters together for the sake of clarity.

"I should get you an engagement ring."

It was only years of experience with Steve's insanity that kept Danny from spitting out his toothpaste all over the bathroom mirror. Instead, he kept brushing his teeth as if nothing had been said, waiting to see just how far Steve was going to take the joke.

"I'm serious, Danny." Steve, apparently now able to translate using nothing more than the set of his partner's shoulders, moved close enough that Danny could see him in the bathroom mirror. He actually did have his earnest face on, damn it.

Danny spat and rinsed, deciding that nipping this in the bud was more important than clean teeth. "So should we go shopping for our matching pink princess cut diamonds today or tomorrow?" He wiped his mouth off, meeting Steve's eyes in the mirror. "I'm sure Kono would _love_ helping us pick out just the right shade."

Steve's brow lowered slightly, faint exasperation marking the beginning of his "I can't believe you don't understand how good an idea this is" face. Since Danny usually saw it when heavy gunfire was involved, it was less annoying than it might have been. "I didn't mean something like that. There has to be some kind of band I could get you."

Danny watched Steve's face, trying to figure out where this was coming from. "You know you can say no when Grace tries to make you watch those bridal reality shows with her, right? Because as much as I love her, I'm pretty sure any court of law would count that as cruel and unusual punishment."

He looked mildly guilty at that, rubbing a hand along the back of his neck. "There might have been a segment," he mumbled.

Danny gave Steve a compassionate pat on the shoulder as he moved past him back into the bedroom. "I'll talk to her. Worst case scenario, we can manage to conveniently lose the remote for a couple of days until the madness passes."

Steve didn't respond as Danny pulled on his pants, and for a brief, wonderful moment it seemed like the matter was settled. Then he looked up, and the earnest face was back. "We could, though," Steve said finally, voice just a little softer than it had been.

Danny sighed, scrubbing a hand across his face. "Do I dare ask why?"

Steve hesitated, either caught with an answer or deciding he couldn't admit the one he had out loud, then narrowed his eyes. "Why are you so determined that we write our vows?" He folded his arms across his chest. "It can't just be that you want me to promise not to blow myself up. You didn't start harassing me about working on mine until I caught you working on yours."

Ah, the vows. He'd mostly started harassing Steve to keep the other man from ever asking about _Danny's_ vows, which were in 15 separate attempts at the bottom of various garbage cans. "Fine, we can do engagement rings," he said, feeling his shoulders tense as he turned back to the closet for a shirt. There was a knot in his chest, and the fact that it had shown up during an absolutely ridiculous conversation about engagement rings just pissed him off. "But if I'm getting one, you are, too. You can talk with Rachel about how disappointing my taste is."

There was more silence from Steve, which was probably a bad sign. Danny felt him move closer, and he started buttoning up his shirt to make it less obvious that he couldn't quite look the other man in the eye. "Danny?" Steve asked quietly. "I'm sorry. Pretend I never brought it up."

Danny closed his eyes, feeling like an asshole. He could rant for a solid three or four hours about every idiotic, immature thing Steve had ever done, but when he got all gentle like this it turned Danny into a useless puddle of human being.

He let out a breath, making himself open his eyes as he finished his buttons. Still, he didn't look at Steve. "I used the traditional vows when I married Rachel, which means I've already screwed those up once." He hated the shakiness he could hear in his voice, words spilling out of his mouth that he hadn't ever verbalized even inside his head. "It probably also means that I'm not that great at being a husband, but if I disappoint you into walking away there's a pretty good chance I'm going to have to jump off a bridge someplace." He swallowed. "I can't screw up this time."

Slowly, gently, Steve's fingers curled around the back of his neck. "I want to tell random people we meet on the street." His voice was soft. "Delivery boys. Everyone."

Thrown by what appeared to be a completely random change of conversation, Danny furrowed his brow as he looked up at Steve. "What?"

He smiled a little. "You have no idea how many times a day I want to point you out to people and tell them that this is the guy who agreed to marry me. That I'm going to get the chance to spend the rest of my life with someone as amazing as you are." He pressed his lips against Danny's hair. "Not to mention the conveniently great ass."

Danny's laugh was suspiciously damp. "You are so full of shit."

"I'm being completely serious." And yeah, that was his earnest face again. "Why do you think I want the engagement rings?"

Danny's chest was still tight, but the knot had been replaced with something else entirely. Really, Steve's punches were a hell of a lot less dangerous than when he radiated sincerity like this. "You're nuts, you know that?" he said finally, voice rough.

Steve grinned. "So I've been told."

Danny felt his own lips curve upward as he hooked his hands on Steve's hips, pulling him closer. "I'm still not sure how thrilled I am about the idea of extra rings, but we can probably come up with something."

Steve's eyes lit up, and Danny felt the warmth of it all the way through him. Then his smile got that "troublemaker" edge to it. "Maybe those 'property of' tattoos you mentioned...."

Danny pulled him down for a kiss. "Shut up."


	2. Some Not-So-Terrible Ones

As the woman on the TV raved about a set of wedding bands made out of intricately carved petrified wood, Steve smiled against Danny's hair. "Didn't you say something about hiding the remote?"

"Shut up," Danny murmured, no heat behind the words. His partner usually had a much harder time getting annoyed when they were cuddling. "You're the one who said we needed to do research."

"We do," Grace answered for him, having taken her usual position sprawled across both their laps. "Uncle Chin keeps saying he doesn't want to get involved, Aunt Kono and Uncle Lou keep having the silliest ideas, and no one else can come up with anything."

Steve sighed. "True." Kono had indeed gone with the pink princess-cut diamond joke –Steve still owed Danny a beer for that one – and all of Lou's suggestions involved handcuffs and choke chains. Luckily, as a father himself, he'd come up with a suitably PG explanation for the one time Grace had overheard him. 

"Not that this is helping much, either." Danny shifted slightly, settling Steve's arm a little more firmly around his shoulders. "Roses made out of shards of abalone aren't exactly my thing."

"You could get rings that look like leis," Grace suggested, shifting around to look at them both. "Because if we hadn't gone to Hawaii, we wouldn't have ever met Uncle Steve."

Steve grinned, already sure Danny was going to say no. "I like that idea."         

"That's because you're both deranged lunatics," Danny responded easily. "Just because I've accepted the fact that you two are meant to be here doesn't mean I enjoy living in a place with a gratuitous amount of sand and idiot tourists."

Grace gave a long-suffering sigh, shooting Steve an "I don't know why we put up with him" look. Steve just grinned, shrugging his shoulder a little in a way that usually meant "well, he is pretty cute," and she nodded as if that was a valid point. It was a fairly regular ritual between the two of them, with each of them taking a different side depending on the situation.

Danny just chuckled, having seen the whole thing. "You two do suffer, don't you?"

"But we love you, so it's okay." She grabbed her dad's hand, giving it a kiss before turning back to the TV screen. "I wish I knew how to make rings. That way, I could make sure you both had the perfect engagement rings."

A moment later, Steve felt Danny go still next to him. He waited, certain his partner was going to say something, but Danny just straightened. "I just had an idea." He nudged his daughter off his lap. "Scoot for a minute, Monkey. I've got to go get something."

They both watched as Danny stood, heading for the bedroom upstairs. Once he'd disappeared, Grace turned to Steve. "Do you think he wants me to make them?" she asked, looking concerned. "Because I only know how to do beads, and I don't think that would work for engagement rings."

He didn't get the chance to answer her before Danny came back down the stairs, one hand closed in a fist. Danny came around to stand in front of them, picking up one of Steve's hands and opening his fingers to drop something onto his palm.

It was a ring, a simple gold band with a small police shield on one side. Specifically, a shield for the Newark Police Department, the badge numbers written in tiny print along the bottom.

He looked up, confused, as Grace picked it up. "You used to wear this all the time," she said thoughtfully, turning it over in her hands like she was remembering it.

"I did." Danny answered his daughter, but his attention was all on Steve. "For a long time, being a New Jersey cop was a big part of who I was. What I didn't give to my family belonged to the job."

Steve nodded, encouraging. He still wasn't sure where Danny was going with this, but he understood living your life for work better than anyone. For a long time, he hadn't even had family to get in the way of being a SEAL.

Grace, watching her father's face, carefully set the ring back in Steve's hand. Danny flashed a brief smile at her, but he was still clearly nervous as he took a deep breath. "I walked away from that when I moved to Hawaii to be with my daughter, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat." He focused on Steve again as he laid a hand over his heart. "But I didn't stop being a New Jersey cop in here until that whole mess you got into with Governor Jameson. That was when I realized I couldn't walk away from you any more than I could Gracie."

There was something in his voice that made it sound like walking away had been a real possibility for a moment, and Steve felt a belated chill of fear at the thought of how much he'd nearly lost without even realizing it. He'd known there was something he was missing....

Then memory hit, making his throat constrict. "The ties," he whispered, closing his eyes a moment as emotion overwhelmed him.

"Yeah." Danny cleared his throat.  "Once I accepted the fact that I wasn't leaving Hawaii as long as the two of you were here, there was no reason to hold onto them anymore." He hesitated, then gestured to the ring. "Being a New Jersey cop meant the world to me. But you and Grace meant more. It wasn't even a choice."

Steve's chest was so full he was pretty sure he was going to cry if Danny kept this up.  "And you were worried about writing your vows," he murmured, low enough that no one else could hear him. Then he tightened his fingers on the ring. "I was going to give the task force six months."

Danny and Grace's eyes widened at the same moment. "What?"

"Even though I'd told Governor Jameson yes, I hadn't planned on staying." His voice was rough. " I told myself I'd try using the island's resources for six months. If it didn't work, I'd switch back to active duty and hunt him down as a SEAL." He looked down at his clenched fist, then back up at Danny. "Then you punched me in the face, and my plans changed."

Grace gasped. "Danno! You never told me you punched Uncle Steve!"

"He deserved it at the time, Monkey," Danny murmured, eyes a little damp now as they locked with Steve's. "If that's the case, it would be really helpful if you had a Navy ring somewhere."

"A SEAL ring, actually." Steve grinned, his own eyes stinging. "We'll have to get them resized, though."

"That's only because you have freakishly large hands." Danny grinned back at him, holding out his arms. "Now get up here so I can kiss you properly."

As Steve happily obliged, he heard Grace make a contented noise behind him. "Good," she said happily. "Now I can start thinking about the flowers."

**Author's Note:**

> Come check out my weekly posts and original short fiction on my [blog](http://jennifferwardell.blogspot.com) or say hi to me on [Tumblr](http://sanctuaryforalluniverses.tumblr.com)!


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